Community Action Committee

The purpose of this committee is to bring together grassroots organizations for networking, information sharing, issues development, and cooperative training purposes that support the development of grassroots capacity for undertaking environmental activities on a place based scale. The Community Action Committee is made up to place-based, grassroots organization, and volunteer association representatives and engages in the following:

Discuss/educate on the issues and how they relate to environmental sustainability (i.e., stormwater management, public access, environmentally appropriate affordable housing, and habitat protection).

Educates others on the committee about individual organizational efforts to address issues (opportunities for agencies to present what they do to the group, opportunities for groups to learn new ways of energizing constituencies).

Engages in constructive dialogue on ways to partner with each other to effect positive results.

Identifies community resources to effectively aid in addressing issues/challenges.

In 2016, the CAC adopted a strategy to develop a comprehensive volunteer monitoring program to improve knowledge about water quality in our creeks, streams, rivers, and bays. The goals of this strategy are to provide an ongoing quality data source for measuring the health of the waters flowing through our coastal watersheds; to grow the cadre of citizen scientists in coastal Alabama; and build the capacity and contributions of grassroots groups related to informing and implementing watershed management plans. The CAC, in partnership with grassroots groups throughout Mobile and Baldwin counties, does this by educating citizens about water quality issues related to their local area; supporting existing and establishing new volunteer water quality monitors; providing an online platform for reporting and viewing collected data; and providing technical assistance and broad support to anyone interested or actively engaged in water quality monitoring and reporting.